Gallery Juno is pleased to present a collection of new works by New York based artist Robii, whose continued exploration in the assemblage of found objects affirms the artist’s ability to transform the unceremonious to the iconic, the displaced into unique forms of mystery and power.

“It’s been eight years since I started creating these Foundlings. Now, more then ever, I am convinced that I have found my voice with these works. They not only speak of some unknown purpose or history but they have given me a purpose and they speak of my history.

I have taken a very methodical approach to creating my assemblages. Found objects are arranged in a style following in the tradition of such artists as Joseph Cornell and Louise Nevelson. Balance, composition and texture are integral to my work that explores the redemptive qualities of discarded material. My limited color palette comes from the materials used, such as: aged, dark wood; brass and gold leaf; machine parts; rusted metal; glass and natural elements. Lately, I have been exploring silver tones as well. Ultimately, in contrast to their humble origins, these assemblages transcend the found quality of their individual parts to become shrine-like objects of beauty”.

Robbii is something of a sculptural alchemist, for there is a palpable magic to these works, conjured from a witches’ brew of seemingly disparate and innocent sources; ornamental woodwork, mechanical hardware, brackets and screens, shells and bones, feathers, photos, and frames. Things, natural and man-made, lost or left behind. An assemblage of scattered parts repurposed, redefined, renewed, redeemed.

Robbii’s process, evident in work like “Green Room”, involves and illustrates a sensitive organization of formal considerations such as color, texture, and materiality. These choices not only establish a visual hierarchy, often a centerpiece with radiating accents, they also serve to confirm the harmony and singularity of the newly composed whole.

But the careful formalism concedes to the greater psychological drama of the works, which take on the added significance of the totem, the icon, the illuminated word. In this they are not merely a study in aesthetic arrangements, or surrealist fantasies, or miniature curio-cabinets; they form a far deeper expression. Charged by an esoteric life-force, the end results become solitary artifacts that exist, somehow, outside of this world. Remnants of an ancient order, perhaps… relics of a far off but familiar world running parallel to our own.

Robbii states that these works speak of an “unknown purpose or history”. In one piece, titled “Gatekeeper”, there is an old key. Happily these works are more than enigmatic enough to transform even casual viewers into amateur historians, explorers, seekers of treasures and truth. Their power wills us to look, to search, to dream, to turn all keys… in the hopes of unlocking the hidden secrets held within their mysteries.